For J'Tanya Adams, resident leadership is the key to unlocking possibilities. "Projects have to be community driven," explains Adams, who started Historic West End Partners, a nonprofit that focuses on economic and cultural development in Charlotte, North Carolina's West End. "Community leaders can recognize community needs and identify pain points and potential wins. They have their fingers on the pulse of what a community needs."
This sentiment is at the heart of NeighborWorks America's Community Leadership Institute (CLI), where Adams will be one of the featured speakers Oct. 27-30. Through DreamKey Partners' resident leadership group, Adams has attended several CLIs, joining resident leaders for the opportunity to learn from national experts about nonprofit leadership, neighborhood revitalization, community engagement and more.
"I hope that they will see the work I've done and understand that I sat in their seat," she says of the CLI audience. "No limits. No barriers. That's my hope."
Sarah Parmenter, NeighborWorks' director of Community Building and Engagement, is also looking forward to this year's CLI. "The experience is transformative. Residents leave energized and with a renewed confidence in the way they can impact their communities."
Residents also leave with an action plan and ideas that they can take back home. Some takeaways from the CLIs that Adams has attended have included everything from learning about board governance and fundraising to the classes and the relationships. For Adams, it's all about collaboration.
Over the years, she has often heard organizations say it's important for community leaders to have a place at the table. "I think they should set the table," Adams says. "It's resident and community leaders who need to be thinking about, choosing and implementing the projects. Others can support, but they have to have full ownership for it to truly be a success."
Adams has been involved in a range of community projects, including an open-air cultural market on two formerly blighted acres in the West End. That initiative gave way to a permanent building for residents and mixed-use shops and offices on the lower floor.
"We knew we were activating a space for greater things to come; something with permanence," Adams says.
Other initiatives included mosaics and murals, and the transformation of public space, which led to the welcoming of Five Points Plaza, a multi-million dollar project. Historic West End Partners also led and brokered the transformation of three strip shopping centers in West end, and an entertainment complex still in the works. Relationships and partnerships, like those with Grubb Properties, Uwharrie Bank, United Way and the Knight Foundations, helped, she says. And the CLI helped her be bolder about the projects she was willing to take on.
As Adams recalls from her early days in resident leadership, "The neighborhood needed everything. Anything that was common to everyone else, we didn't have. There were no walkable amenities. There was no retail." Community leaders like Adams zeroed in on the community's needs, including a more welcoming entrance so that when people exited the interstate, they wouldn't want to just keep driving.
And the work and resident leadership continue to evolve. "I'm glad to do my part and help us create the change we desire," Adams says. "We control our destiny. We create our narrative."
Fred Dodson, Jr., chief operating officer and executive vice president for DreamKey Partners, first met Adams during her work in Charlotte's Seversville community. "It was apparent to me that J'Tanya was passionate about advocating for the interests of the residents of that gentrifying neighborhood," he says. "She is the very definition of a servant leader."
Adams' impactful body of work led to NeighborWorks honoring her with a 2018 Dorothy Richardson Award for Resident Leadership, named for a woman who galvanized her own neighbors in Pittsburgh in the 1960s to fight for the resources they needed to save their homes and community. Richardson's own work led to the founding of Neighborhood Housing Services of Pittsburgh, the national model for NeighborWorks America. Adams also received recognition this year from the Charlotte Business Journal, who named her as one of the people leading Charlotte's growth "to the next stage."Her passion has grown. So has her involvement with Charlotte's historically Black communities. She offers these words of inspiration to current and future resident leaders. "Get it done," she says. "Because you can."
